


Legacy

by Lykegenia



Series: Rosslyn Cousland [14]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Comfort Sex, Comic: Dragon Age: The Silent Grove, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fade to Black, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, Married Couple, angsty smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 14:09:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13215411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykegenia/pseuds/Lykegenia
Summary: When Alistair hears of Maric's imprisonment, he faces the choice to stay with the life he's built, or go and find the father who was never anything more than a stranger.





	Legacy

Darkness had already fallen by the time Alistair tiptoed into his room. Only the embers in the grate lit his path towards the bed, and the sleeping form of his queen beneath the blankets. He had promised her dinner and a quiet evening, but first his meetings had overrun, and then…

“Mmmmhhnn…”

He froze, wobbling on one foot, his hands on his bootlaces.

“You’re late,” Rosslyn mumbled into the pillows.

He relaxed, smiling, and finished removing his boot, and then started work on the other.

“Alistair?”

Eager to put his worries out of his mind, he chuckled as he pulled his shirt over his head. “How do you know I’m not an assassin?”

“Hmmm…” came the sleepy reply. “For one thing, assassins don’t go galumphing into their targets’ bedchambers.” She yawned and stretched, rolling over with a sough of soft fabric.

“I do not _galumph_!” he protested, pausing on the laces that held up his breeches.

“If you say so, dear.” The Queen of Ferelden giggled. “But you also used the door. Unusual for an assassin looking to avoid the teeth of a pair of very faithful mabari hounds, don’t you think?”

Alistair chuckled again as he lifted the covers to slide between the sheets, the part of the day he always looked forward to most. “I have such a clever wife,” he murmured, and smoothed his hand around her waist. _Just a little while longer, just let him forget until he fell asleep, let the question lie until the morning…_

“What’s wrong?” she asked. When he didn’t answer, her fingers found their way to the back of his neck, where they rubbed warm, soothing circles against his chilled skin.

“It’s nothing.”

The fingers stilled. “Alistair…”

“It’s…” He sighed. “Don’t worry about it.”

He tried distraction, shimmying closer to leach his wife’s warmth and run his palms along her most sensitive places as he leaned in for a kiss, but Rosslyn Cousland-Theirin was not a person to be waylaid, and even as she yielded to the cover of his mouth, his tongue sliding between the part of her lips, she pushed back on his shoulders, rolling him onto his back. She followed, rising to straddle him at the waist so the bedcovers slipped to the small of her back and her unbound hair fell in a black wave over her shoulders, the downy tips brushing against his chest. Lost along the wandering trail her fingertips brushed over his collarbone and up the line of his neck, he brought his hands to trace the familiar lines under her nightshirt – his, once upon a time – up her thighs to her waist, and round to the base of her spine where the skin was soft. Even after seven years of marriage, his touch made her shiver with delight, and the slow reveal of her flesh as he drew the linen shirt over her head sent a thrill of anticipation coiling through his gut.

She breathed his name again as she tilted forward. Concern lay in the depth of her eyes as she propped her arms on either side of his head. He saw the way her spine dipped between her shoulder blades as she stretched her neck to press a slow kiss to the trailing edge of his eyebrow. The new position pulled her all but flush against him, giving him an unparalleled view down the length of their bodies that made his fingers tighten at her waist. Her lips moved downward, drawing a groan from deep in his chest.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she murmured, as her teeth grazed the pulse point beneath his ear.

His groan this time was one of defeat. With gentle hands, he lifted Rosslyn away, rolling onto his side so she could easily tuck in against his chest, with his arms wrapped around her just where they were meant to be. The rest of the world might be skewed, but he could hold on to this.

“I got a letter,” he said. The words had to be forced up his throat. “From Zevran. He says… he says he knows a man who says my father is alive.”

Rosslyn stiffened. “Maric?”

“He didn’t die in a shipwreck. It was a ruse, and the Crows took him.”

For a long time, Rosslyn said nothing, only stroked her thumb over the curve of his shoulder. He was at the wrong angle to see, but he could imagine the frown on her face, the thoughtful one she wore in judgement in petty court or when trying to work out supply routes for her Wardens. He skimmed a chaste kiss against her hair.

“The Crows are assassins, not kidnappers,” she said eventually. “Why would they take him? Where?”

“To some prison.” Alistair saw the words, hastily written, dance in front of his eyes. “Velabanchel. It’s where the Crows put people to forget about them, unless the torturer wants a bit of fun. Zevran didn’t go into much detail.”

The rough sketch he had been given was rotten enough. A sheer fortress lashed by gulping waves, a stark shadow under sullen clouds that never parted for the sun. Screams and moans of torment mocked and mimicked by the wind and the gulls. For the past three hours, Alistair had wrestled with this image, of the possibilities it contained. He had never been given a chance to call Maric ‘Father’, not in the way that mattered, and after all, Ferelden’s famous hero had given him nothing but a strong profile and a throne that often seemed more trouble than it was worth. It rankled how often the older members of the Landsmeet still held him up to the shadow of the man who freed them from Orlais. As if destruction wreaked by Urthemiel paled in comparison to the petty tantrums of Meghren the Usurper.

Rosslyn squeezed his hand, brought his knuckles to her lips, and kissed them. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I…” Alistair closed his eyes, took a steadying breath. “It can’t be true. I don’t know what I should do if it is true. What do I even owe Maric?” He swallowed and pulled her closer. “Eamon only took me in because Maric asked, but he never wanted me, not really. And with Isolde, well, you know how well _we_ got along. Looking back, with everything that’s happened – now I have you, and Teagan, and with everything we’ve done… I can see what a joke my life was before. And that was all thanks to _him_.”

He fell silent, straying through memories he had tried to keep buried for most of his life, but the sight of Maric’s name in Zevran’s looping handwriting stirred the dark corners of his mind like a gust of wind kicking up last year’s leaves. Rosslyn brought him back with the steady light in her eyes, the patterns she shaped over his chest, quiet except for the slow, even draw of her breath because she more than anyone knew what he had been through.

“I thought I buried this,” he growled. “I put it behind me when I realised nobody would give me a straight answer, and then again when they crowned me king and decided my father must have loved me after all. I don’t regret – not for a second,” he added, recognising the sullen edge to his own voice. “We’ve done so much good. But…”

“But you thought he was dead,” she finished for him. “We all did, my love. If he’s in this… prison, then you can’t blame yourself for not knowing.”

“What if he’s been out there this whole time? There are so many things he could tell me, about where I come from, who I am. Whether he loved my mother, or…”

And there was the crux of it. The question he had never allowed himself to ask, even in the most forlorn moments of his childhood, when he was finally old enough to realise who and what he was, and to learn how men with power so often wielded it like just another weapon. The unwanted bastard – how far did it go? His mother had died when he was still too young to understand, and could not tell him.

Wordlessly, he let himself be pulled down, covered with kisses and wrapped in a guarding embrace, his head settled into the crook of his wife’s neck where her fingers wound into his hair and her heartbeat pulsed beneath his ear.

“I love you,” she said.

Realisation dawned on him. “You think I should go.”

“Would Zev have told you if he didn’t trust the information?”

“No, but –”

“You’re not the kind of person who can sit by and do nothing,” she warned him. “And this will gnaw at you. I can’t tell you what to do, but… I remember, looking back on Highever as it burned, walking all the way to Ostagar without a care for anything because my mind was stuck there, watching it, wondering what more I could have done. I – I had to look Fergus in the eye and tell him I left them to die.” She shifted, twining more deeply into his embrace, seeking the comfort only he could provide. “You deserve closure for this – for everything that’s happened.”

Alistair buried his eyes against the pillow, lips searching blindly for his wife’s skin. She whined under his hands, gripping his hair when he levered his thigh to press her legs apart and run a broad, calloused palm down the lean shape of her ribs. Really, the decision had been made when he first read Maric’s name, but the enormity of the concept had been too big for him to grasp alone. He wanted to be selfish, wanted to shy away from this new, terrible burden like he had after Ostagar, when he had sulked and shrunk inside himself and let Rosslyn take charge of saving the world. But he had grown since then. He was no longer just a luckless bastard running from his father’s legacy.

“What about Ferelden?”

Rosslyn chuckled. “I spend enough time gadding about. It’s about time you had your turn, if only to give me a chance to rest my aging bones. Nathaniel can look after the Wardens for a little while.”

“Hmph,” he grumbled, rolling over until he pinned her, holding his weight on his elbows. A few silver wisps threaded among the black sheet of her hair and he curled them fondly around his fingertips. “You’ll be young forever, dear lady.”

“Unless you don’t think I can manage to run the kingdom all by myself?” she challenged, leaning deeper into the pillow to regard him with a lazy smirk. Her palms rested on his biceps, relaxed, waiting to see what he would do.

He leaned forward and kissed her, slowly, the dart of his tongue against her mouth concurrent with a long, deliberate downward grind of his hips. He didn’t know which made her moan, but he enjoyed the sound of it. “More that I’ll come back to find you’re running things so beautifully they’ll kick me straight back out again.” He pouted. “I’ll have to go and live in decadent exile in _Orlais_.”

“Oh love, it wouldn’t be so bad,” she teased. “At least they have good cheese.”

“I knew it!” He bit down on her earlobe, pressing his weight down a little harder so she couldn’t escape. “You’re planning a _coup_.”

“What a ridiculous n- _unh_ … notion.”

He hummed as his attentions moved lower down the sensitive arc of her neck. It made her squirm. It made his hips twitch, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to indulge in her warmth, to melt away the shadow in his mind and concentrate on following the endless trackways of pleasure across her body, learned by heart and treasured because it had always been enough to burn the pain away.

“Rosslyn…”

“I know,” she breathed. “In the morning, we’ll work out what to do.”

* * *

 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The harbour showed as a distant smear on the horizon, all grey stone and screeling gulls, but instead of the lush green of summer, the distant hills of Amaranthine now wore the red and gold splendour of autumn - the royal colours, welcoming him home. The blue of the sky and the calling of nearby larks felt like a mockery, and Alistair’s fist clenched where it rested on the forward rail.

As Denerim loomed larger, his eyes drew upward to the shadow that clung to the hill above the thriving market district. On the voyage out, he had tried not to imagine what it would be like to stand here, triumphant in his return with Maric at his side, his pride in the city’s prosperity matched only by that shining in his father’s eyes.

The memory of his imaginings lanced through him. For a moment – just a moment – he wondered what it would be like to simply slip away from the ship like an ordinary sailor and disappear into the crowd, maybe go to a tavern or find a quest or two on a chanter’s board, like old times. How could he go back to the gilt of the palace, all the pomp and circumstance of being king, when the memory of Maric lay on his mind like the raw sting of a wound? The illusion had been so real; they had talked so long in the dream, about so many things. And now there would never be anything more than that.

Rosslyn waited for him at the royal dock. She stood in everyday clothes, of high quality but without the glitter of courtly attire or Warden mail, and he was grateful for it. A carriage waited behind her with a small contingent of guards, and though a few distant passersby paused to gawk at the royal banner, there was no fanfare to announce his arrival. Just her, standing immovable, the fulcrum around which the world turned. He had missed her – so much the pain of it was like the attraction of two lodestones, all the greater for being such a short distance away. He saw the frown creasing her brow, and guilt added to the low ache in his gut. When nothing remained for him in Tevinter, he had tried to send word ahead of his return, but whenever he tried to put pen to paper, the words refused to come. She had probably only heard of his arrival through the relay of scouts they had set up along the Amaranthine coast to warn of Raider attacks.

They outgrew the need for words long ago. He descended the gangplank without a word and stopped short of her on the wharf, unable to quite bring himself to reach out beyond his failure. He had wanted them to meet. He had imagined her warm amusement as Maric bowed and kissed her hand and made a joke.

“Alistair.”

She took his hand, pushed the hood of his cloak back so the low sun fell in his eyes. He couldn’t meet her gaze, or the censure he feared he would read in them, even when she cupped his face in one gentle hand.

“ _Alistair_.”

“I…”

The words clogged in his throat, too many to say all at once, and only the slow brush of her thumb over his cheek where she crossed the space between them kept his legs from buckling. Her hands slid around his shoulders, drawing him into the protective wall of her arms and he went gladly, even though he didn’t deserve it. He failed. He _failed_ , and still she embraced him like she had almost died without him. Her voice, when it whispered into his neck, trembled with the weight of everything that had passed since their parting.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me some love in the comments <3


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